On this particular Thursday afternoon, Jenny Blanchard is riffing on the merits of "Mayberry."

The fictional North Carolina town conjured for the mid-century hit television series "The Andy Griffith Show," where everyone knew each other's name and a helping hand was just beyond one's picket fence, has inspired many a nostalgic yearning among those of a certain generation.

Though when talking with Blanchard, who until last week worked as the manager at Louisville's Vic's Coffee and Espresso for the last 20 years, it becomes obvious that the show has imparted on her more than just its sleepy slice of Americana, but rather an operating system.

"In times past, there was a real sense of community," Blanchard said. "You just knew your neighbors and you knew about each other's lives and helped each other out. This town is like that.

"Maybe I've just always had a dream of living in a town like that."

Many have found such notions of small town kindness preserved in that little Louisville coffee shop, where Blanchard — the "community connector" and "unofficial mayor" — has remained a fixture of the city's downtown morning scene, friends and customers say.

She's served as more than just a familiar face for the last two decades; almost every customer that walks through its doors has a personal relationship with Blanchard — and beyond that, they likely have formed relationships with fellow customers at her urging.

Advertisement

This May, Blanchard is embarking on a two-year graduate program at Adams State University to pursue a masters degree in its Counsel in Education program.

In recent weeks, the community has rallied to raise funds for her newest endeavor. A GoFundMe titled " Help Fill Jenny Blanchard's Cup" has raised roughly $2,500.

Jenny Blanchard smiles as she makes drinks for customer Matt Hicks on Valentine's Day at Vic's Espresso and Coffee on Main Street in Louisville. It was Blanchard's last day at the coffee shop, where customers describer her as the "unofficial mayor" who has formed relationships with all of her customers during her 20 years at the shop. (Paul Aiken / Staff Photographer)

"For nearly 20 years," the site reads, "Jenny Blanchard has touched thousands in our community with a daily dose of coffee and good cheer. Her contagious smile, warm welcome, memory of everyone's drink, encouragement to our kids, and just being a bright light on Main Street is something rare and beautiful. By any measure she's a Louisville treasure."

Outside the coffee shop, Blanchard's roots run deep in the community: As a volunteer in the city's blossoming art scene, her influence can be felt throughout downtown. On a given summer day, friends say she also can be found helming the barbecue.

"Her lasting impact is really about kindness and community," Blanchard's friend and former coworker Dustin Moran said. "In this modern world it's a gig economy and it's a dying notion for people to work and be a part of something for 20 years. She really represents persistence and steadfastness."

Ask most and they'll likely say their favorite memory of Blanchard took place on any given Wednesday morning, when Louisville elementary schools have late starts and it's become a tradition for children to stream into Vic's, eager to answer one of Blanchard's abstract trivia questions and get one of her speciality drinks fashioned uniquely for each child.

Before finding her way to Boulder County in 1998, Blanchard ran a coffee house in rural Tennessee. She was first hired at Vic's to give the shop some life. From the start, she says, that meant getting customers to interact with each other.

"At first it was a way — for the people who were standing in line and waiting for you to hurry up and finish their drink — it was a way to distract them, to get them all to talk to each other," she said.

Blanchard wants to be a therapist in some capacity, and after decades of getting to know people during some of their most vulnerable times, she may be well equipped.

"You're seeing people before the sun comes up and everyone is still a little bit asleep," she said. "They haven't had their coffee and they're still in this sort of dream state. In those moment I feel like I've really gotten to know people. You see someone usually five days a week, even if it's for a moment, for 20 years, and that's a really important relationship."

Though she's leaving her traditional community role, she's not leaving altogether, she assures a procession of customers who have wandered over on a Thursday afternoon to offer a familiar and a parting anecdote.

"You'll see me studying at the library; come and say hi," she says.

Blanchard always enjoyed the life that working in a coffee shop afforded, the customers and the relationships that they bring with them, but only recently did she begin to embrace it as her life's work.

"You're not making a cup of coffee," she says she was told by a colleague recently, "you're serving people a blessing in a cup. Customers are coming to connect with this little vestibule of the window where you're serving them, to have that healing connection. They're coming to be seen.

The days of small-town Louisville may quickly be waning, with a population boom and modern development influx threatening to remake even the quaintest of downtowns along the Front Range. So for many in Louisville, Blanchard's tenure has preserved some of the city's last vestiges of its small-town essence, giving a sense of routine and place, friends say.

"She strives to really connect with the community and connect people with one another who otherwise might not know that person in line right behind them is also (interested in similar issues)," Ted Kowalski, a longtime customer and friend said of her.

"In terms of helping define what Louisville is all about — it's kindness and generosity and connecting with one anther in our small town — that's what she means to me and what I think she means to a lot of people in the community."

The Boulder alt-country band gives its EPs names such as Death and Resurrection, and its songs bear the mark of hard truths and sin. But the punk energy behind the playing, and the sense that it's all in good fun, make it OK to dance to a song like "Death." Full Story